Sectumsempra: Cut Off, Forever
by Polly Oliver
Summary: Don't be misled by the main character categories: Hermione isn't actually in this. Main character is a bemused Muggle college student who finds herself, inexplicably, in the body of a 12 year old witch Hermione. UNFINISHED, likely to remain so.
1. Invasion of the Body Snatchers!

**Disclaimer:** If I owned the Harry Potter verse and its characters, would I be writing FANfiction? No, I'd be too busy diving in a swimming pool filled with hundred dollar bills—I mean (cough) giving money to charity.

**Author's Note:** This story starts from the perspective of an original character who had the misfortune (in her mind) to find herself in the body of one Hermione Granger, age 12. It may get much weirder, as I am toying with the idea of an awkward, Lolita-esque unrequited or unresolved romance with Professor Severus Snape. She's certainly impressed by him at first glance. You have been warned.

Sectumsempra: Cut Off, Forever

Chapter the First:

Invasion of the Body Snatchers!

I hear the insistent buzzing of my roommate's alarm early one morning, jolting me uncomfortably from a pleasant dream into the sluggish irritability of too-early-to-wake, too-late-to-go-back-to-sleep.

"Shut it _off_, Darcy…" I mumble, "goddamn…"

There's a gasp from my right, and I open my eyes blearily to see, not Darcy, but a young girl, about twelve, with brown eyes and a scandalized expression on her face. As my eyes open wider, I find also that this is NOT my dorm at Westmoreland. It's a dorm alright, but no one in it is anything close to university age. What the hell? How did I end up at a boarding school?

And the buzzing sound was _not_ an alarm, as I had thought. It's some sort of mechanical top, spinning and whirring and glowing red on a bedside table. A voice from the other side of me says something puzzled about a "Sneakoscope" going off, whatever the hell that is, but I ignore this and pull myself up out of bed to observe my surroundings. Definitely not Westmoreland. I'm in a sumptuous fourposter bed with—ha!—scarlet bedcurtains. Never thought I'd sleep in a bed with curtains. There's a trunk at the foot of the bed I'm in. I look curiously at it, but someone interrupts me.

"What's wrong with your Sneakoscope, Hermione? It looks like it's been jinxed or something." This from a dark-haired girl at the far end of the room who looks like she might be of Indian heritage, and also looks to be around twelve years old.

"Eh?" I mutter, not understanding any of what she just said, especially not the "Hermione" bit. Is that supposed to be my name or something?

Turns out, after I wake up a bit more and start asking some probing questions that I can tell really throw the other girls for a loop, it _is_ supposed to be my name. Apparently, I'm twelve-or-so-year-old Hermione (I have a look in the mirror, and yes, I do look about twelve—_that's_ quite a shock; you don't go switching bodies just _every_ day, now do you?); I'm at a place called Hogwarts; I have some sort of security device called a Sneakoscope that spins like a top and whirs when there's Danger Afoot; and I…do magic? As in, regularly?

(I wonder for a bit if Hermione—whoever she is—has been feeding these girls a bunch of nonsense about magic in order to scare them or impress them or something, but their nonchalance about the whole idea makes me second guess this thought. Plus I seem to be another person suddenly, and magic would certainly explain _that_. I _used_ to be twenty one, a student at Westmoreland University majoring in aerospace engineering, and named Marianna Wilkinson. Apparently not anymore. Maybe I died in my sleep and was reincarnated into the body of a twelve year old.)

Still absorbing all this while trying to conceal my shock form the other girls, I rifle through the contents of the trunk by my bed, which I assume is mine (Hermione's I mean), and pull out some…long black robes. Okay. Guess I'll wear these. The other girls don't seem to find it out of the ordinary, so I figure I'm safe.

There's a door at the end of the room; I walk through it, and down the long, spiraling staircase beyond. (Was I in a tower of some kind?) It leads out into a large room full of barely smoldering fireplaces and overstuffed armchairs. The place seems creepily deserted to me (still early, I guess), so I explore onward.

At the opposite end of _this_ room, in turn, is another doorway of sorts. (This boarding school, or whatever it is, is turning into a regular _maze_! It's kind of trippy. Wonder if it's a _magical_ boarding school?) Anyway, there's this opening a few feet up from the floor, and when I push on the door or whatever's blocking it, it swings outward to reveal an echoey stone corridor.

Suddenly I'm hit by a draft of cold air and shiver. I turn around to go back inside for more covering (maybe Hermione has a jacket or something), but I find that the "door" I just came through is actually a painting of an immense woman in pink satin. She's snoring! Apparently, the people in the paintings here can _move_! At any rate, this one can.

I attempt to pull the painting out from the wall just like I pushed it out from the inside, but to no avail. The frame won't budge and the fat old dame keeps snoring on. Grumbling to myself, I sink down against the wall beside the painting and tuck my knobbly knees close up to my chin for warmth.

I sit there, unmoving, until morning. After about the first five minutes, I fall into a light doze and have unsettling dreams about what I must now call my "former" life.


	2. A Day in the Life

**Disclaimer:** If I owned the Harry Potter verse and its characters, would I be writing FANfiction? No, I'd be too busy diving in a swimming pool filled with hundred dollar bills—I mean (cough) giving money to charity.

**Author's Note:** This story starts from the perspective of an original character who had the misfortune (in her mind) to find herself in the body of one Hermione Granger, age 12. It may get much weirder, as I am toying with the idea of an awkward, Lolita-esque unrequited or unresolved romance with Professor Severus Snape. She's certainly impressed by him at first glance. You have been warned.

Sectumsempra: Cut Off, Forever

Chapter the Second:

A Day in the Life

A few hours later, I'm awoken by an outpouring of other kids from the portrait hole. They range from around my age (well, what _appears_ to be my age, anyway) to nearly eighteen. One of the girls from my dorm whisks me away to class with her, and I go along bemusedly.

Throughout the whole day, I follow the other girls from my dorm and try to keep up, despite having no idea what's going on. I seem to be missing a few things, most notably, ANY MEMORY AT ALL OF THIS PLACE AND WHY, PRECISELY, I'M HERE, but also some books (on spells? so trippy), a wand, and a hat of the pointy variety.

The last class, on this particular day, appears to be called Potions. This much I've gathered from following "Lavender" and "Parvati" around—they're two of the girls from my—or Hermione's, rather—dorm, and they seem to know what's up, though _my_ cluelessness seems to worry them. Two boys, a red-haired one and a skinny one with dorky glasses, have been trying to talk to me in each of our classes, I think (they've been in all the same ones as me), but every time, there was either a distraction or the teacher noticed and told them off for it. Maybe they like to make fun of me; maybe they're my friends—I don't know. Neither do I want to find out: knowing as little as I do, either situation is potentially very problematic.

Lavender, Parvati, and I are not the first to arrive in the disturbingly dungeon-like Potions classroom (shouldn't there be a law against having children's classes in a dungeon? wouldn't that be deeply traumatizing to a child's overactive imagination?); several unfamiliar kids (again, about twelve—guess there aren't any mixed-age classes here, are there?) stand grouped around tables, setting out cauldrons, kits of weird substances, and (how surprising!) more books.

A man dressed in great billowing drapes of black robes is standing with his back turned to us, talking with one of the groups of children already present. Or rather, he listens patiently as a pale, rather ferret-faced blond boy whines about something. All I catch is the word "Potter" before the man in black turns around to face the doorway, and I get my first good look at him.

Sleek black hair hangs in sheets around his face, which despite the somewhat sickly, pale yellowish tinge and the strong, hawkish nose is not altogether unappealing. He looks only about ten years older than me—than my real self, I mean. His black eyes seem to bore into my soul—he looks at me suspiciously, for a second, almost as though he knows that I am not who I appear to be. The next moment, the illusion is gone; just another ill-tempered and suspicious teacher, if rather more ill-tempered and suspicious than any of the others were, as his behavior throughout the lesson proves.

The other students call him "Professor Snape" and "sir" with a fearful note to the old-fashioned formality that I hadn't sensed in any of our other classes. It seems he's intimidated them pretty effectively. All through the lesson he's especially nasty to the skinny boy with glasses who continues to try to get my attention in this class as well. From some of Professor Snape's snide comments I gather that he thinks the boy, whose name turns out to be "Harry Potter," has an opinion of himself that is far too puffed up for his own good. Me, Snape ignores for the most part, after deploring my lack of any supplies at all and "taking points" away from "Gryffindor" which has happened, for the same reason, in all my other classes as well. Lavender and Parvati chimed in at that point on my behalf, for which I am grateful, saying that I hadn't been myself since last night, but I don't think Snape heard them.

I find my mind wandering after about half an hour of everyone silently mixing up ingredients in their cauldrons like a wacky chemistry experiment (Lavender and Parvati having exasperatedly given up asking for my advice after I shrugged at them a couple of times). I wonder about why I'm here, in this body, at this place; I wonder if I'm not probably in shock from the surrealism of it all; I wonder about the skinny Harry Potter kid and his red-haired friend, and why they want to talk to me (rather quickly, though, I stop wondering this particular thing, as Harry notices me staring and starts making signs at me; hopefully he'll just think I'm giving him the cold shoulder); and the last thing I find myself wondering, as the bell rings for the end of class, is what Professor Snape's _first_ name could be…?


	3. Miss Granger's Parents Are Not Dentists

**Disclaimer:** If I owned the Harry Potter verse and its characters, would I be writing FANfiction? No, I'd be too busy diving in a swimming pool filled with hundred dollar bills—I mean (cough) giving money to charity.

**Author's Note:** This story starts from the perspective of an original character who had the misfortune (in her mind) to find herself in the body of one Hermione Granger, age 12. It may get much weirder, as I am toying with the idea of an awkward, Lolita-esque unrequited or unresolved romance with Professor Severus Snape. She's certainly impressed by him at first glance. You have been warned.

Sectumsempra: Cut Off, Forever

Chapter the Third:

In Which it Comes to Light that Miss Granger's Parents Are Not Dentists

As we students file out of class, I in the wake of the rather irritable Lavender and Parvati (who haven't forgiven me for not helping them with their wacky concoctions yet, I think), Snape's voice calls out, quietly but sternly,

"Miss Granger. A word, please."

Whoever "Miss Granger" is, sounds like she's in for it—maybe she got caught cheating at her concocting—but as Lavender and Parvati immediately turn around and nudge me anxiously, and Snape quietly repeats, but with more veiled menace this time,

"Miss _Hermione_ Granger. A word _now_, if you don't mind,"

I realize, too late, that _I_ am the one being called. Funny surname to have, Granger. Reminds me of cattle farms, for some reason. Reluctantly, and with a mounting feeling of dread,I turn and walk back into the dungeon to stand before Snape. I find that despite the initial appeal of his features, I have no particular desire to be alone in a room with one of the nastiest teachers I've had the displeasure to encounter, nor to be alone with the one person who seems to have seen through my involuntary disguise even for the briefest of instants. Nevertheless, the way his black eyes pierce mine _is_ kind of sexy. Shaking off that thought (I really shouldn't be _allowed_ to have those kinds of thoughts while I'm in this body, should I?), I square my shoulders and prepare myself to be scolded, or punished, or thrown out as an imposter.

However, he merely says, in an unreadable voice, "Tell me about your parents."

I'm so surprised at this bizarre request that for a moment all I can do is stutter out, "My, my p-parents?"

I gather my wits a little and ask, "Er…what do you want to know about them? Sir," I add as an afterthought; I am after all, his student, in a sense, and this school seems to favor formality in student-teacher relations.

"For instance, what do they do for a living?" Snape replies in the same unreadable tone, a hard, probing expression behind the blackness of his eyes.

Obviously, I don't know what Hermione's parents do for a living, and I certainly don't know why Snape's asking, but I doubt Snape knows either, _especially_ if he's asking about them (unless, that is, he really does suspect me of being an imposter, which seems unlikely). Thus, I reckon I can get away with telling him what my _actual_ parents do for a living. However, this plan backfires on me: as soon as I start really thinking about my parents, I realize that I'm never going to see them again if I don't get out of this stupid child's body, and that even if I did see them it would be as a stranger.

As I'm attempting to describe my father's complicated and very boring career in Public Relations for various companies, I'm holding back tears; and there's something disorienting about the way images of my parents and my previous life come rushing to the front of my mind; almost as though once Snape had gotten the thoughts flowing about my parents he had managed to open a conduit into my mind, bringing up memories of my real life, unbidden. Of course, that sort of paranoia about "mind-reading" is typical of me, and I brush it off fairly quickly. Not so easy to brush off are the powerful emotions stirred up by the memories and the knowledge that they are, henceforth, totally irrelevant.

Professor Snape stops me in mid-sentence as I'm telling him about my mother's horrible boss from a few years back, and I notice then that my voice has been pretty clearly cracked and on the verge of sobbing for about the last ten seconds.

Surprisingly, Snape puts a hand on my shoulder. I hadn't figured him for the type. At this unexpected gesture of kindness, my last resistance breaks down; I fall to my knees and start sobbing in earnest. It's incredibly embarrassing, crying copiously and, to all appearances, inexplicably, in front of an ill-tempered stranger with piercing eyes.

But perhaps he wasn't being kind after all. He pulls me to my feet by one arm and says, "Come. We're going to the Headmaster," at which point I stop crying immediately, and follow meekly behind him, only sniffling a little bit now. I wonder dimly why he's taking me to the Headmaster. Have I done something wrong? (I mean, apart from arriving to class unprepared, which hardly seems an offense to merit any Headmaster's involvement.)

Now that I think about it, Professor Snape's actions since the end of class don't really make sense at all. He keeps me after the lesson is over to ask me about my parents—why? And then, he takes me to the Headmaster after I start crying…very strange. I don't know what to make of it. As Snape purposefully leads me through the convoluted passageways and staircases of the school, my stomach feels as though it has turned to lead.


End file.
